“It’s Uncle Mo.”
“Uncle Mo is wacko,” Ranger said.
“Yes, but he’s my wacko. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill him until after I log him in and straighten a few things out.” Like who killed Ronald Anders.
“Professional courtesy.”
“Yeah.”
“You have any leads?”
“No.”
“We’ll work together on this one,” Ranger said. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five.”
“Five in the morning?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Nope. No problem.”
Trenton is creepy at three in the morning. Forlorn and subterranean, the pulse of the city checked behind black glass and acid-etched brick. Even the night people, the drunks and the kiddie crews, were tucked away, leaving the occasional fluorescent wash of light to derelict pigeons, walking the sidewalks, pecking at fool’s food.
What sort of person would cruise these streets at this hour? Cops, shift workers, evildoers, bounty hunters.
I swung into my lot and cut the engine. Chunks of yellow dotted the big block building in front of me. Mrs. Karwatt, Mrs. Bestler, the DeKune apartment, Mr. Paglionne. Seniors don’t waste a lot of time sleeping. Mr. Walesky, across the hall from me, was probably watching TV.
I stepped away from the Buick and heard a car door open and close behind me. My heart did a little tap dance at the sound. I looked to the building entrance and saw two figures move from the shadows. My gun was still in my pocket. I hauled it out and spun around, almost smacking a wiry little guy in the nose with it.
He immediately jumped back a step, hands in the air. “Take it easy,” he said.
I had the other two in my peripheral vision. They’d stopped and raised their hands. All three men were wearing ski masks and brown coveralls over their street clothes.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“We’re concerned citizens,” the wiry little guy said. “We don’t want to hurt you, but if you keep after Mo we’re going to have to take action.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope. “You’re a businesswoman. We understand that. So here’s the deal. The money in this envelope represents your fee for bringing Mo in to Vinnie, plus a two-hundred-dollar bonus. Take the money and hop a plane for Barbados.”
“Number one, I don’t want your money. Number two, I want some answers.”
The wiry guy made a come-on signal with his hand, and car lights blinked on behind him. The car rolled forward and the back door opened.
“Get in that car, and I’ll shoot,” I said.
“I’m unarmed. You wouldn’t want to shoot an unarmed man.”
He was right there. Not that it mattered. It had been an empty threat to begin with.
I’d set my alarm for four fifty-five and was so startled when it rang that I fell out of bed. I hadn’t allowed myself time for a shower, so I brushed my teeth, dressed myself in some clothes I found on the floor from the previous day and staggered downstairs.
Ranger was waiting for me in the lot. He pulled a piece of paper, folded into four sections, from his jacket pocket and gave it to me. “A list of Montgomery Street tenants,” he said. “Anything jump out at you?”
I didn’t ask how he’d gotten the list. I didn’t want to know the details of Ranger’s network. I suspected his methods for acquiring information might sometimes involve broken bones and small-caliber bullet holes.
I handed the list back to him. “Don’t know any of these people.”
“Then we go door-to-door at nine o’clock.”
Oh goody.
“In the meantime we’ll stake out the lobby and the garage.”
The plan was for Ranger to take the lobby and for me to take the garage, to position ourselves at the elevator banks and question the tenants as they left for work. At nine o’clock, after drawing a big zero, we started working the floors.
The first four floors were a washout.
“This doesn’t feel hopeful,” I said to Ranger. “We’ve talked to a lot of people, and we haven’t even had a nibble.”
Ranger shrugged. “People don’t notice. Especially in a building like this. No sense of community. And there’s another possible reason for no one to have seen him.”
“Jackie might have been wrong.”
“She’s not the most reliable witness.”
We walked up a flight and started moving down the hall, knocking on doors, showing Mo’s picture. Third door down I got a hit.
The woman was older than most in the building. Sixties, I guessed. Nicely dressed.
“I’ve seen this man,” she said. She studied the photo. “I just don’t know…Maybe Stanley Larkin. Yes, I think I must have seen him with Stanley.”
“Is Larkin’s apartment on this floor?” I asked.
“Two doors down on this side. Number five-eleven.” Two little frown lines creased her forehead. “You said you were apprehension agents. What does that mean?”
I gave her the minor charge, the missed-a-court-appearance line, and she seemed relieved.
Ranger knocked on Larkin’s door, and we both flattened ourselves against the wall so Larkin couldn’t see us through the security peephole.
A moment later, Larkin opened the door. “Yes?”
Ranger badged him. “Bond enforcement. May we step inside to ask you a few questions?”
“I don’t know,” Larkin said. “I don’t think so. I mean, what is this all about?”
Larkin was in his late sixties. About five feet, ten inches. Ruddy complexion. Sandy hair, thin on the top.
“It will only take a moment,” Ranger said, his hand on Larkin’s elbow, gently guiding him back a few steps.
I used the opportunity to step inside and look around. It was a small apartment packed with furniture. Avocado green wall-to-wall carpet. Harvest gold drapes straight from the seventies. I could see the kitchen from where I stood. One juice glass and one cereal bowl in the dish drain. A coffee mug and newspaper on the kitchen table.
Ranger was showing Larkin the picture, asking him about Mo. Larkin was shaking his head.
“No,” Larkin said. “I don’t know him. Mrs. Greer must have been confused. I have some older men friends. Maybe from a distance one of them might look like this man.”
I quietly stepped to the bedroom door. Queen-size bed in the bedroom. Perfectly made with a dark green paisley spread. A few pictures on the dresser in an assortment of silver frames. Night table at bedside with a clock radio.
Ranger handed Stanley Larkin a card. “Just in case,” Ranger said. “If you see him, we’d appreciate a call.”
“Of course,” Stanley said.
“What do you think?” I asked when we were alone in the hall.
“I think we need to finish the building. If no one else places Mo with Larkin, my inclination is to put it on hold. Larkin didn’t feel like he had secrets.”
CHAPTER 8
Ranger and I went back to the Bronco and stared at the apartment building.
“False alarm,” I said. No one else had recognized Mo.
Ranger was silent.
“Sorry about your car.”
“It’s only a car, babe. I can get a new one.”
It occurred to me that it might be significant Ranger had said he could get a new Beemer as opposed to buying a new Beemer. And it also occurred to me that it might be pointless to suggest filing a police report or informing an insurance company of theft.
“You think we should stake out the building?” I asked.
Ranger looked the length of the street. “We could hang around for a while.”
We slouched down, arms crossed over our chests, seat pushed back to give more leg room. Ranger never said anything when we waited like this. Ranger had a conversational potential only slightly greater than Rex’s. That was fine by me because I had my own thoughts.
I was bothered that Mo had gone back to the store. Even if the
store was the most important thing in my life I’m not sure I’d have risked a visit. Mo was carrying a plastic bag, which could have been filled with anything from underwear to ice cream cones. He also hadn’t smelled all that good. He’d smelled musty. And he’d smelled like sweat and dirt. Either he’d been working hard in the garden, or else he was living on the street.
I was still speculating on these possibilities when at twelve o’clock Ranger got us drinks and sandwiches from Sal’s.
My sandwich looked like brown bread and grass. “What is this?” I asked.
“Mixed sprouts, shredded carrot, cucumber and raisins.”
Raisins! Thank God. I was afraid someone had scooped my sandwich out of the rabbit cage.
“Bedemier has to be staying somewhere,” Ranger said. “Did you check out the possibility of a second apartment?”
“Did that first thing. Drew a blank.”
“Have you canvassed motels?”
I gave him an openmouthed, goggle-eyed look that said, Ugh! No!
“It would pass the time,” Ranger said. “Keep us out of trouble.”
Ranger’s sense of humor.
“Maybe Mo is living on the street. Last time I saw him he smelled like a cave.”
“Hard to check on caves,” Ranger said. “Easier to check on motels.”
“You have any ideas on how you want to do this?”
Ranger pulled a section of the Yellow Pages out of his pocket. “Sal didn’t need these,” he said. He handed half the pages to me. “You get the first half of the alphabet. Show the picture. Ask about the car. If you find him, don’t do anything. Call me.”
“What if we zero on this?”
“We enlarge our canvass zone.”
I shouldn’t have asked.
Half hour later I was behind the wheel of the Buick. I’d rearranged my list according to geography, starting with the closest motels, working my way to Bordentown.
I’d called my father and asked him to please take my pickup back to the Nissan service center. He’d murmured something about throwing good money after bad, and that kids never listened anymore, and then he’d hung up.
By five o’clock I’d gone through two tanks of gas and had struck out from A to J. By five o’clock it had gotten very dark, and I wasn’t looking forward to going home. Driving Uncle Sandor’s Buick was like rolling along in my own private bomb shelter. Once I parked the bomb shelter in my parking lot, unlocked the door and set foot on the blacktop, I was open season for the Uncle Mo Fan Club.
I didn’t feel like being open season on an empty stomach, so I detoured to my parents’ house.
My mother was at the door when I pulled up to the curb. “What a nice surprise,” she said. “Are you staying for supper? I have a ham in the oven and butterscotch pudding for dessert.”
“Did you put pineapple and cloves on the ham?” I asked. “Are there mashed potatoes?”
The pager hooked to my belt started to beep. Ranger’s number flashed on the screen.
Grandma came over and took a close look. “Maybe when my Social Security check comes in I’ll get one of these gizmos.”
From deep in his chair in the living room my father boosted the sound on the TV.
I dialed Ranger’s number on the kitchen phone.
“Who are you talking to?” Grandma Mazur wanted to know.
“Ranger.”
Grandma’s eyes got wide. “The bounty hunter! What does he want?”
“A progress report. Nothing important.”
“You should ask him over for dinner.”
I put the phone to my chest. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Tell him we got ham,” Grandma said.
“I’m sure he’s busy.”
My mother looked up from measuring out flour. “Who’s busy?”
“Stephanie’s boyfriend,” Grandma said. “The bounty hunter one. He’s on the phone right now.”
“And he’s too busy to come to dinner?” my mother said. More indignant disbelief than a question. “Whoever heard of such a thing? The man has to eat, doesn’t he? Tell him we have plenty of food. Tell him we’re setting an extra plate.”
“They’re setting an extra plate,” I told Ranger.
There was a moment of silence at the other end.
“You come from a long line of scary women,” Ranger finally said.
Water bubbled up from the boiling potatoes and spattered on the stove. Red cabbage cooked in the two-quart pot. Peas and carrots simmered on the far burner. The kitchen windowpanes were frost-etched on the bottom and steamy on the top. The wall behind the stove had started to sweat.
My mother stabbed at the potatoes. “The potatoes are done,” she said.
“I have to go,” I told Ranger. “The potatoes are done.”
“What’ll happen if I don’t show up?” Ranger wanted to know.
“Don’t ask.”
“Shit,” Ranger said.
My father is an equal opportunity bigot. He wouldn’t deprive a man of his rights. And he’s not a hate-filled man. He simply knows in his heart that Italians are superior, that stereotypes were created by God, and if a person is worth anything at all he drives a Buick.
He was now staring at Ranger with the sort of dumbfounded confusion you’d expect of a man whose home had just been firebombed for no good reason.
Ranger was in his black mode today. Double gold studs in his ears, form-fitting long-sleeved black T pushed up to his elbows, black-banded diver’s watch at his wrist, black rapper slacks tucked into black combat boots with enough gold chain around his neck to secure bail for murder one.
“Have some ham,” Grandma said to Ranger, passing him the plate. “Are you a Negro?” she asked.
Ranger didn’t blink an eye. “Cuban.”
Grandma looked disappointed. “Too bad,” she said. “It would have been something to tell the girls at the beauty parlor I had dinner with a Negro.”
Ranger smiled and spooned out potatoes.
I’d decided at an early age to stop being embarrassed over my family. This is yet another advantage to living in Jersey. In Jersey everyone has the right to embarrass themselves with no reflection on anyone else. In fact, embarrassing yourself periodically is almost required.
I could see my mother going through mental gymnastics, searching for a safe subject. “Ranger is an unusual name,” she managed. “Is it a nickname?”
“It’s a street name,” Ranger said. “I was a Ranger in the army.”
“I heard about them Rangers on TV,” Grandma said. “I heard they get dogs pregnant.”
My father’s mouth dropped open and a piece of ham fell out.
My mother froze, her fork poised in midair.
“That’s sort of a joke,” I told Grandma. “Rangers don’t get dogs pregnant in real life.”
I looked to Ranger for corroboration and got another smile.
“I’m having a hard time finding Mo,” I told my mother. “You hear anything at the supermarket?”
My mother sighed. “People don’t talk much about Mo. People mostly talk about you.”
Grandma mashed her peas into her potatoes. “Elsie Farnsworth said she saw Mo at the chicken place getting a bucket of extra spicy. And Mavis Rheinhart said she saw him going into Giovachinni’s Market. Binney Rice said she saw Mo looking in her bedroom window the night before last. Course, two weeks ago Binney was telling everyone Donald Trump was looking in her window.”
Ranger declined the butterscotch pudding, not wanting to disrupt the consistency of his blood sugar level. I had two puddings and coffee, choosing to keep my pancreas at peak performance. Use it or lose it is my philosophy.
I helped clear the table and was seeing Ranger to the door when his cell phone chirped. The conversation was short.
“Got a skip in a bar on Stark Street,” Ranger said. “Want to ride shotgun?”
Half an hour later we had the Bronco parked in front of Ed’s Place. Ed’s was standard fare for
Stark Street. One room with a couple chipped Formica tables in the front and a bar across the back. The air was stale and smoke-choked, smelling like beer and dirty hair and cold French fries. The tables were empty. A knot of men stood at the bar, forsaking the three bar stools. Eyes swiveled in the dark when Ranger and I walked through the door.
The bartender gave an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes cut to an alcove at one end of the bar. A dented sheet metal sign on the wall by the alcove said GENTS.
Ranger’s voice was low at my ear. “Stay here and cover the door.”
Cover the door? Moi? Was he kidding? I gave a little finger wave to the men at the bar. No one waved back. I pulled the .38 five-shot out of my pocket and shoved it into the front of my Levi’s. This didn’t get any waves either.
Ranger disappeared into the alcove. I heard him knock on a door. He knocked again…louder. There was the sound of a doorknob being tried, another knock and then the unmistakable sound of a boot kicking in a door.
Ranger burst from the hallway on a run. “Went out the window into the alley.”
I followed Ranger into the street. We stopped for a split second, listening for footfalls, and Ranger took off again, through the alley to the back of the bar. I was skidding on ice, kicking at garbage, and I was breathing hard. I caught my toe on a piece of board and went down to one knee. I pulled myself up and swore while I hopped for a few steps until the pain faded.
Ranger and I came out of the alley and hit the cross street. A dark figure ran for the front door of a row house halfway down the block, and we pounded after him. Ranger charged through the front door, and I took the alley two houses down to secure the rear exit. I was gasping for air and fumbling for my pepper spray as I came up to the back door. I had my hand in my pocket when the door flew open, and Melvin Morley III crashed into me.
Morley was as big as a grizzly. He was accused of armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He was drunk as a skunk and didn’t smell much better.
We hit the ground with a solid thud. Him on the bottom. Me on top. My fingers reflexively grabbed at his jacket.
“Hey, big boy,” I said. Maybe I could distract him with my female charms.
Plum Boxed Set 1, Books 1-3 Stephanie Plum Novels) Page 61